More than 3mn women swarmed the Kerala capital yesterday to offer ‘pongala’ to a Hindu goddess in what’s billed as the largest congregation of female devotees in the world.

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, 2.5mn had participated in the women-only event in 2009. Authorities put this year’s figure at around 3mn.

Devotees from the southern districts of Kerala as well as the bordering districts of Thirunelveli and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu visit the city on the culmination of the 10-day annual festival at the Attukal Bhagavathi temple and cook the ‘pongala’ offering for goddess Kannagi.

The offering is prepared using rice, jaggery and coconut on makeshift hearths along the city roads. Then priests sprinkle sacred water on the cooked rice, and the women begin their return journey.

Yesterday’s festivities began around 11am when the chief priest of the temple lit an earthenware pot from the fire of the sanctum sanctorum of the temple.

It was then passed on to the women devotees, who were lined up across the main roads of the capital city, occupying a staggering 13sq km of area.

Cricketer Sreeshant’s mother Savitri Devi, who came from the port city of Kochi, was among those who made the offering along with several film and television stars.

“I prayed not for my son but the whole Indian team who are playing against Bangladesh in Dhaka today and other matches in the World Cup. They had all come to our home and they are like my son,” Devi said. “I used to come and offer pongala every year and I believe it’s because the goddess’s grace that Sreeshant is in the team.”

The temple is dedicated to Attukal Bhagavathi who is believed to be an incarnation of Kannaki, the central character of the Tamil epic Silappadhikaram.

“I’m here for the first time. I am really excited to see such huge crowds of women,” said 43-year-old Retnamma Kumar, who came from Kottayam.

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It's hard for me to wrap my brain around 3,000,000 women converging on one spot. That's like five times the population of my home city! Well, more power to them, and I hope their prayers and offerings bring positive results. We sure as hell need it these days. Perhaps if we had more worship of the Goddess and less worship of Mammon, particularly in the USA, we'd all be better off.

Play was a central element of people’s lives as far back as 4,000 years ago. This has been revealed by an archaeology thesis from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, which investigates the social significance of the phenomenon of play and games in the Bronze Age Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan.

It is not uncommon for archaeologists excavating old settlements to come across play and game-related finds, but within established archaeology these types of finds have often been disregarded. [That sure is right!]

“They have been regarded, for example, as signs of harmless pastimes and thus considered less important for research, or have been reinterpreted based on ritual aspects or as symbols of social status,” explains author of the thesis Elke Rogersdotter.

She has studied play-related artefacts found at excavations in the ruins of the ancient city of Mohenjo-daro in present-day Pakistan. The remains constitute the largest urban settlement from the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley, a cultural complex of the same era as ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia. The settlement is difficult to interpret; for example, archaeologists have not found any remains of temples or palaces. It has therefore been tough to offer an opinion on how the settlement was managed or how any elite class marked itself out.

Elke Rogersdotter’s study shows some surprising results. Almost every tenth find from the ruined city is play-related. They include, for instance, different forms of dice and gaming pieces. In addition, the examined finds have not been scattered all over. Repetitive patterns have been discerned in the spatial distribution, which may indicate specific locations where games were played.

“The marked quantity of play-related finds and the structured distribution shows that playing was already an important part of people’s everyday lives more than 4,000 years ago,” says Elke.

This is the caption from the article:
Chess pieces from Mohenjo-daro.
Photo: bennylin0724, Flickr

Are these chess pieces? As far as I know, there is no concrete evidence that chess was played 4,000 years ago by the people living in the Indus valley city-states/settlements. But, it has to be admitted that the pieces are suggestive of the Staunton-designed pawns from the 19th century which, perhaps, own their inspiration to just such ancient game pieces.* But to call them chess pieces? Blasphemy! Then again, "if it looks like a duck, and walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck..."

* It is known, for instance, that Staunton modeled his knight pieces on the horses in the Elgin Marbles ensconced in the British Museum.

Unfortunately, we don't know exactly where the pieces in the photograph were excavated, or how old they are. The use of the photo in the article suggests that they are all from Mohenjo-daro, but it doesn't really say so, does it? These could be a collection of gaming pieces from any museum in the world, which often seem to lump together without distinguishing ivory Islamic chess pieces together with 4,000 year old Egyptian faience senet pieces, 900 year old hnefatafl pieces and 400 year old bone chess pieces from Russia!

This article is mostly propaganda - it hints at special finds but doesn't describe anything in detail -- and yet still manages to give away the location of the tomb complex sufficiently clear enough that I'm sure looters have already found it. The article was published by the national mouthpiece of the People's Republic of China on February 16. By now they have already bribed the guards to join in the looting of what ever the local government officials haven't already appropriated for themselves from the items recovered by the archaeologists. I don't give a hoot where the complex is located, okay? Just tell me what's in it and quit the bullshit! You'll see what I mean.

Published at globaltimes.cn as reported in the Peoples Daily Online, which is geared specifically toward English-speaking people like me, whom the Chinese government (and most Chinese citizens, evidently) assume are stupid and ignorant, and easily duped. Hmmm, sounds familiar...

The Xinjiang Institute of Archaeology reported on Feb. 14 that it discovered an ancient tomb group covering an area of more than 10,000 square meters 100 kilometers south of Hami City in China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. This is the first time that a tomb group dating back 3,000 years has been found in Hami region.

Chinanews reported that the tombs group has a large scale and a dense distribution. It was also the first time that a tomb with a sacrificial altar was found in the Xinjiang region. Most burial objects were made of pottery and wood, but some objects made from stones, bones, horns, bronze and iron were also found here.

The director of Hami's Cultural Relics Bureau said archaeologists had already excavated more than 150 ancient tombs in the last two months.

At the excavation site, archaeologists found something special, including some materials never before discovered, special construction styles and some unique burial customs. In addition, they also found various precious cultural relics under unique cultural background.

Judging from the current situation of the group, archaeologist said it might be remains of an early Iron Age settlement dating back about 3,000 years ago.

The tomb group was located at the southern margin of ancient Silk Road. From those unearthed cultural relics, archaeologists were able to ascertain that the ecological environment, including the amount of water and plants, was much more favorable at the time than they are currently.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The following report takes a look at climate change in the Middle East some 4200 years ago, focusing on one city in particular, and how it managed to survive when so many of its neighbors did not.

What's the old saying - I've not got it absolutely correct, I'm sure, but it is something like "those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it." An apt lesson that applies not only to what is occurrring today in the politics of the Middle East -- with recent overthrows of established authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt, and unrest in Yemen, Bahrain, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, etc. One has to wonder what that old "revolutionary" is thinking about these days, holed up within his massive tent-enclave in Libya...ahem.

As I was saying, not just a lesson that applies to politics but, perhaps more importantly in the long run, climate change. And what, exactly, what any one civilization do about climate change? Not a whole lot, when it comes down ot it. Mother Earth has her own cycles, and Her own way of dealing with shit.

But while Mother Nature is doing her thing now, as She did then, there are billions of people living on this world today. Billions. So, what do you do when you've got - millions - of people "knocking on your door" - so to speak, wanting to come in and use up your scarce resources, that are withering away at an alarming rate. Those millions are there because the lands that they lived in are now desserts - but you're in not such good shape, either. What do you do? Do you let those millions pounding on your doors die off, like their cattle died off in the desserts? What do you do? What do you do...

About 4,200 years ago a series of disasters struck cities and civilizations throughout the Middle East.

In Egypt the central government collapsed. The same state that had built the great pyramids, and kept pharaoh as the supreme authority, could no longer keep the country united. This ushered in an era of powerful provincial leaders (known as nomarchs) and rival claimants to the Egyptian throne.

A similar scenario happened in Mesopotamia where the Akkadian Empire, an entity whose power stretched from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, also went under. This led to local rulers stepping in and taking up power.

There is also evidence of social upheaval in the Levant. The city of Khirbet ez-Zeiraqoun in northern Jordan, whose inhabitants burrowed out hundreds of meters of water tunnels into the ground, was abandoned.

Climate change is believed to be a major reason for this upheaval. Research in the Middle East suggests that the environment became increasingly arid – making it difficult to support the intensive farming that is required to feed large cities.

“Paleoclimactic data from numerous sites, document changes in the Mediterranean westerlies and monsoon rainfall during this event with precipitation reductions of up to 30%, that diminished agricultural production from the Aegean to the Indus,” wrote scientists Harvey Weiss and Raymond Bradley in a paper they published.
...

Goddesschess has funded prizes for female players since Challenge VIII. For Challenge XIII, we have a new prize structure.

For every female player in the Open, $40 for each win by a femme and $20 for each draw. There are no prizes for the Reserve Section. In addition, Goddesschess will continue its tradition of paying the entry fee for the top-finishing female player in the Open and the Reserve for the next Challenge, should they choose to play.

We hope to see a great chess femme turn-out for Challenge XIII. Take a chance, play in the Open - have some fun and maybe win some nice money, too. Good luck!

Registration from 6:20 to 6:50 pm. It is important to arrive during the registration period as individuals will be assigned to quads based on their ratings. Players in the quad will have similar ratings. If you arrive after the registration period we cannot guarantee that you will be placed in a quad. If you know that you will be arriving late this Thursday, but want to be paired for the first round, PLEASE contact me in advance to let me know so that we can include you in the proper quad. If you know you will be late and do not inform me, it increases your odds of having no game this week. [Tom Fogec: PHONE: 414-405-4207. EMAIL.]

EXTRA: "David's Endgame Prize" There will be a $5.00 "Endgame" prize for this tournament, which will be awarded by David Dathe. This prize will be awarded for the most interesting endgame played in the tournament. Mr. Dathe will be the judge of any games submitted, and he may annotate the endgame for the Southwest Chess Club Blog. Mr. Dathe plans to continue this for all our longer time control tournaments this year (not rapid or blitz games). All tournament players are encouraged to submit a game. Please submit the game to the TD. The game needs to be legible (readable) so the endgame can be properly analyzed. An interesting endgame is the key, not a perfectly played opening or middle game.

The Pick 'n Save was doing landmark business in last-minute bouquets and cards tonight, LOL! It was absolutely hilarious, although standing in a line three times as long as normal wasn't much fun since I only had a few items and wanted to get out of there, but boy oh boy, that store is raking in the cash today! EVERY MAN IN LINE - young, old, tall, short, black, brown, white, dressed up and grunge - ALL HAD FLOWERS AND/OR CARD IN HAND. Some guys were going for the gusto and having BIG arrangements made up by a clerk who was stationed at the florist's desk (there is rarely anybody there, normally).

I happened to catch this article today that was originally published in the weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal. Enjoy!

Iran Bans Valentine's Day The regime's posture turns the smallest gestures into thrilling acts of subversion.
By MELIK KAYLAN
February 11, 2011

In another sign of its ever more improvisational approach to governance, the Iranian regime has outlawed Valentine's Day. "Symbols of hearts, half-hearts, red roses, and any activities promoting this day are banned," announced state media last month. "Authorities will take legal action against those who ignore the ban."

Some 70% of Iran's population is said to be under the age of 30, so it seems natural that Valentine's Day has caught on in a country where the young keep trying to find non-state-mandated rituals to call their own. The state, for its part, continues to respond with a Whack-a-Mole approach to any social ripple not dreamt of in its philosophy.

Theocratic regimes invariably suffer from the same besetting sin: As the world evolves, they must either revise their antiquated doctrines or try to hold the world rigidly in stasis. Iran's ruling mullahs keep choosing the latter option. And with mosque and state firmly conjoined, there's no stray detail of daily life so arcane that the scriptures can't be mobilized to rein it in.

The Iranian state has pronounced against unauthorized mingling of the sexes, rap music, rock music, Western music, women playing in bands, too-bright nail polish, laughter in hospital corridors, ancient Persian rites-of-spring celebrations (Nowrooz), and even the mention of foreign food recipes in state media. This last may sound comically implausible, but it was officially announced by a state-run website on Feb. 6. So now the true nature of pasta as an instrument of Western subversion has been revealed.

The regime's posture turns the smallest garden-variety gestures into thrilling acts of subversion. Slipping a Valentine card to a girlfriend takes on the significance of samizdat. Every firecracker set off during Nowrooz diminishes the police state's claims to omniscience. The mullahs have appointed themselves the enemy of fun; as a result, wherever fun herniates into view, it is a politicized irruption of defiance.

In "Rock 'n' Roll," the playwright Tom Stoppard proposes that rock music more than anything else—the arms race, dissident intellectuals, economic decay—brought down the communist system because it came from an unanticipated source for which the politburo theorists had no answer. Their enforcers could counter explicit resistance, but their ideologues never prepared defenses against the onslaught of pure fun. No one in charge knew how to neutralize this entirely new category of opting out through the delirium of music. In the play, the rigid communist edifice crumbles in the face of a mysteriously apolitical impulse to freedom embodied by young folk who simply "don't care about anything but the music."

The mullahs can offer no specific dogma against the widespread underground rock scene in the suburbs of Tehran and elsewhere. They often arrest those at basement shows or garage performances with improvised expedients—for the blasphemous nature of their gyrations, or for illicit socializing between the sexes. In being able to justify their prohibitions on religious grounds they have an advantage over their communist counterparts of old.

But under what rationale could the consumption of foreign dishes constitute an offense? Nationalism, we are told. Yet the regime expends considerable energy suppressing the Persian, as opposed to Islamic, identity by discouraging Nowrooz and other elements of the culture that date from the pre-Muslim era of jahiliyya, the so-called time of ignorance. [Frigging arrogant bastards - some day they will be hoisted on their own petards - preferable driven through their groins.]

In the end, Iran's rulers face an impossible task. Their genesis myth of a society based on a codified schema of sacred laws looks neither codified nor sacred. It convinces no one. Instead, the regime seems dedicated above all to stamping out joy wherever it may accidentally arise—a sour, paranoid struggle against irrepressible forces of nature, change, the seasons, music, romance and laughter. The Iranian people can take comfort: No earthly authority has won that particular contest for long.

CAIRO – A full inventory of the Egyptian Museum has found that looters escaped with 18 items during the anti-government unrest, including two gilded wooden statues of famed boy king, Tutankhamun, the antiquities chief said Sunday.

The 18-day uprising that forced out President Hosni Mubarak engulfed the areas around the famed museum, on the edge of Cairo's Tahrir Square. On Jan. 28, as protesters clashed with police early on in the turmoil and burned down the adjacent headquarters of Mubarak's ruling party, a handful of looters climbed a fire escape to the museum roof and lowered themselves on ropes from a glass-paneled ceiling onto the museum's top floor.

Around 70 objects — many of them small statues — were damaged, but until Sunday's announcement, it was not known whether anything was missing.

Antiquities Minister Zahi Hawass said the museum's database department determined 18 objects were gone. Investigators searching for those behind the thefts were questioning dozens of people arrested over several days after last month's break-in.

The most important of the missing objects is a limestone statue of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, the so-called heretic king that tried to introduce monotheism to Egypt, standing and holding an offering table.

"It's the most important one from an artistic point of view," said museum director Tarek el-Awady. "The position of the king is unique and it's a beautiful piece of art." During Akhenaten's so-called Amarna period, named after his capital, artists experimented with new styles.

Also gone is a gilded wooden statue of the 18th Dynasty King Tutankhamun, Akhenaten's son, being carried by a goddess. Pieces are also missing from another statue of the boy king wielding a fishing harpoon from a boat.

"We have the boat and the legs of the king, but we are missing other parts of the body," el-Awady said. "We are looking everywhere for them — around the museum, outside, on the roof, from where the thieves got into the museum."

He said none of the missing objects was from the gated room containing the gold funerary mask of King Tutankhamun and other stunning items from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings — the museum's chief attractions. The looters did not break into the room, he said.

The other missing items are a statue of Nefertiti, Akhenaten's wife, making offerings, a sandstone head of a princess and a stone statuette of a scribe from Amarna, and a heart scarab and 11 wooden funerary statuettes of the nobleman Yuya.

Antiquities authorities also announced Sunday that thieves broke into a storage site at the royal necropolis of Dahshur, south of Cairo, on Feb. 11. They had no information yet on whether items were missing.

The Egyptian Museum remains closed and guarded by an army unit, but workers are cleaning the vast building and the garden around it. Efforts are being made to improve security.

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"Advanced Chess" Leon 2002

About Me

I'm one of the founders of Goddesschess, which went online May 6, 1999. I earned an under-graduate degree in history and economics going to college part-time nights, weekends and summer school while working full-time, and went on to earn a post-graduate degree (J.D.) I love the challenge of research, and spend my spare time reading and writing about my favorite subjects, travelling and working in my gardens. My family and my friends are most important in my life. For the second half of my life, I'm focusing on "doable" things to help local chess initiatives, starting in my own home town. And I'm experiencing a sort of personal "Renaissance" that is leaving me rather breathless...